Micing hand percussion

[major240]

We have a visiting African music group on campus tomorrow. Looking for any tips on micing African percussion or hand percussion in general. We are talking placement here...we have Shure 58's and a couple Audix OM2's to work with.
Any thoughts, suggestions are appreciated.
Thanks.

 

[vox]

Mic 'em up basically just like any other drum, you can probably give 'em a little more distance if you dont have to worry about the drum mics picking up a screaming guitar amp. Try this for starters, if you have enough channels/mics put one mic per drum, placed between 2 inches and 10 inches from the playing head angled down towards the head at between a 30-60 degree angle. If you dont have the channels stick a mic between similar pairs of drums (it may even be possible to mic the whole drum group with a single stereo pair, depending on the room/environment/requirements ). The blend of drums should (probably) be similar to that of a whole conventional band, with certain drums filling the low frequencies and others filling the mids and highs, mix it to sound balanced across the spectrum unless that sounds blatantly wrong. There will probably be a 'lead' drum. If the result seems muddy, use eq to find and emphasize the dominant 'voice' of each drum a little, and you might need to roll off a little boxiness/boominess/mud from the low mids.

I don't claim to be the Hand Drum guru or anything but these are some of the things that I've come across and how I handled them.

I could be wrong Good Luck.